1. Field
The present disclosure relates to interactive document visualization, and specifically, a method, system, and computer readable medium for document visualization using interactive folding gesture techniques on a multi-touch display.
2. Description of the Related Art
Interactive document visualization is used in displaying images, such as three dimensional (3D) images, on a display. There currently exist multi-touch displays which are now commonly used for visualization on a display. Further, different methods of displaying information on such displays currently exist.
An effective principle for visualizing information on a display is the focus-plus context principle. A method that uses the focus-plus-context principle displays content in a focus region which is rendered at high fidelity with minimal distortion, and displays content in a peripheral context region with a certain amount of distortion so as to make efficient use of screen space or computational resources. An example of a method that uses the focus-plus-context principle is the fisheye view. However, the fisheye view works poorly for displaying documents since the fisheye view transforms straight lines into curved lines which causes poor legibility.
Another form of the focus-plus context principle for visualizing documents is folding. The objects or pages of the document are rendered so that each part of the document is flat and parallel to the screen without distortion. The context regions are folded off to the sides with perspective distortion. In Mackinlay, The Perspective Wall: Details and context smoothly integrated (1991), three “walls” are used for displaying a document in 3D. A Perspective Wall style visualization is shown in document 101 of FIG. 1, in which a center wall faces the user and renders the document without distortion in a plane parallel to the screen. Two side walls of the document are rendered with the effects of perspective distortion. Perspective distortion causes the contents that are farther into the screen to be rendered smaller, as shown in FIG. 1. As shown in FIG. 1, straight line segments (e.g. in the text characters) are rendered to straight line segments on the side walls in FIG. 1.
Elmqvist, Melange: Space folding for multi-focus interaction (2008), is another example of an information visualization method using the focus-plus context principle with folding. A 3D space folding metaphor is used and multiple focus regions of the space are rendered facing the user without distortion and the context regions are rendered with perspective distortion. Specifically, Elmqvist uses a 3D space folding metaphor with multiple focus regions parallel to the screen and the rest of the space is folded up.
Mackinlay exemplifies document visualization using folding techniques. However, they do not provide users with an adequate display and folding of a desired document.
Further, in the field of document visualization on a display, there currently exist different ways of manipulating a document. As shown in FIG. 2, documents can be displayed on a display 201 overlapping each other. However, portions of the document appearing on the face of the document are not visible to the user in the overlapping portions.
Another type of document visualization is origami folding. However, origami has different goals than folding for document visualization.
Therefore, there exist deficiencies in the current art with respect to folding visualizations. In Mackinlay and Elmqvist, for example, a standard mouse and keyboard setup is used. This does not exemplify how a physical piece of paper would be physically folded by a person, which is usually done with more than one finger and with two hands. Therefore, the current art does not properly provide interaction techniques that allow a user to fold documents on a display.